Welcome Home
by LJunattainable
Summary: Dean brings Cas home to Kansas. A companion piece to 'Going Home'; Dean's point of view. (Read 'Going Home' first). Also on AO3 at (remove the spaces) archiveofourown . org / works / 937444; warning: s9 spoilers


Dean worries at the inside of his cheek with his tongue, watches Sam and thinks about Cas.

It's been two weeks since the angels fell and the world went to hell. Not literally, of course, but there's a lot of crap going down and Dean honestly doesn't even know where to start trying to deal with it all; it's hard to pretend it's not their job to do something. Even so there are some loose ends to tie up first.

Up until recently, he was wrapped up in worrying about Sam, and he kind of owes it to Sam to show him how important he is to Dean, even to the extent that Dean feels guilty when his mind unwittingly wanders to thoughts of Cas. But Sam came home from the hospital a week ago and he's getting along just fine, getting stronger every day. So now that Dean doesn't have to worry quite so much about Sam, he lets himself worry about Cas.

He thinks Cas is still alive. Some of the angels didn't survive the fall but most did. On top of that, he's heard word that a faction of the fallen angels are looking for Castiel and Dean thinks they'd only be doing that if they know for certain that he's alive.

The trouble is where the hell is he? He could literally be anywhere on Earth.

Dean stares at the world map he has drawn (very) roughly on a piece of butcher paper. There're a couple of crosses marked on its surface – one for where he last saw Castiel before the fall, one for where he heard the angels were looking. Two weeks and this is all he's got to show for it.

"I've a couple more possibilities." Dean jumps at the sound of Sam's voice from over his shoulder. He tries to shuffle the paper away and out of sight.

"Yeah?" The guilt he felt at focusing somewhere other than on Sam hasn't completely gone it seems. "Possibilities for what?"

Sam looks at him disbelievingly, shakes his head. "Cas is my friend too, Dean." Sam reaches over and puts two crosses, in pencil, on Dean's sheet. One the next state over and one in Italy. "This one," Sam says tapping on the Italian cross, "mass healings and stigmata, and this one," he moves his finger to the mark in neighbouring Iowa, "A homeless guy was spotted trying to lay hands on a couple of sick dudes at a homeless center."

"Did it work?" Dean asks. "The laying hands?" Sam shakes his head.

Dean chews his lip some more. "Not Italy," Dean decides. "Cas wouldn't be cool with the whole stigmata thing." Dean considers the 'homeless healer', then says despondently, "The angels we've seen that fell still have powers enough to be able to heal, so probably not that one either."

"But it's only one state over," Sam says quietly. Not pushing exactly, but suggesting. "And there's something else."

"Yeah?"

"The homeless guy – he gave his name as Dean Winchester."

-l-

When Dean gets to the homeless shelter, the man is gone. It doesn't really sound like Cas, the way they describe him – hurt, sick, worn, defeated. If it wasn't for the physical description that went along with it, Dean would dismiss it out of hand.

He rings Sam.

'_Is it Cas?'_ Sam asks before anything else.

"Dunno," says Dean. "He's gone. I need more info. They said the guy wasn't a regular – looked like he was passing through. I need to know which way he was likely to head when he left here. They said he looked as if he'd been in a pretty bad fight so check police reports and hospitals either side of Grinnell. I'll wait here."

Two hours later, with Dean nursing only his second beer much to the annoyance of the bar owner, Sam rings back.

'_No police or sheriff reports relating to assaults, and no hospital reports either, but I do have something. I called around a couple of hunters in that state and Ted said that he'd overheard some wranglers a few days back laughing and boasting about beating on some homeless guy._' Sam pauses. '_It could be a coincidence,'_ he says cautiously.

"I get that, Sam. And if it isn't, which way is he heading?"

'_This way. He's heading towards Kansas._'

-l-

Two days later, and numerous small towns and community kitchens, bars and barns searched and contemplated, Dean is nearly at the Kansas border and seriously considering just heading home. There've been no new updates, and with no new updates he has no idea what he's doing. Sam calls and Dean picks up the phone prepared to tell him he's on his way home until they can get a fresh lead. Turns out they have one.

-l-

Dean plucks the piece of paper off the notice board outside the local market. The words 'Dean Winchester' stand out clear, if slightly scrawling, and there's an address in one corner in a different hand. Dean opens the paper out and reads the short note inside: 'Dean. I'm sorry. I tried to come home.' He doesn't recognize Castiel's handwriting but he'd recognize that concise, apologetic tone anywhere and the finality implied in the short phrases fills him with dread and a sense of urgency.

Dean heads out to the address on the piece of paper. The community kitchen is closed and he stamps his feet and bangs loudly on the locked door impatiently. There's no answer. It's mid-afternoon now. The place opens again for an hour at 5pm according to the paper pinned to the door. He goes back to the car and sits and glares at the locked door.

When the kitchen finally opens, he's pointed in the direction of a free clinic.

Dean scrabbles for his phone and dials. There's something he needs to double-check. "It's me," he says when Sam picks up. "The fallen angels we've heard about – they can all heal themselves right – all of them, no exceptions?"

'_Yeah, it seems so, why?'_

Dean looks again at the note in his hand. "'Cos I'm standing here with the note; I'm ninety-nine percent sure it's from Cas, but the dude who wrote this is sick – Pneumonia they said."

'_So if Cas wrote the note then... '_

"He can't heal himself. He's lost more of his powers than any of the other angels we've seen. Maybe he's even human." Dean wipes a hand over his face; Cas doesn't deal well with the whole human experience.

'_And if Cas didn't write the note then we have no lead on Cas.'_

"Yeah, pretty much."

'_Kind of a lose-lose situation.'_ Sam says. _'I'm sorry,Dean. How are you holding up? Do you need me to come out there and help?'_

"No, I'm fine. You stay there, and you and Kevin do your thing and look for other leads just in case it's not Cas."

Dean hangs up and drives to the clinic. When he gets there, he's directed to a public hospital in the nearest large town, and when he gets there a mournful-looking middle-aged matronly type woman who would look more at home in a funeral parlor, which is somewhere Dean definitely didn't want his mind to go, looks him up and down suspiciously. Then she seems to decide to give him the benefit of the doubt over whether he's really her patient's cousin or not, and with a shrug, accompanies him into a room holding a few occupied beds, some with visitors.

The noise of the hospital slowly fades to background in Dean's ears as the nurse points out a bed, two along from the end where the patient is apparently sleeping. An oxygen tank battles with various monitors and an IV for bedside space and Dean can't see much of the patient himself. He approaches cautiously under the nurse's watchful eye; Part of him wants it to be Cas – at least his search will be over; but the other part, the part that knows that if it is Cas he's not an angel any more, wants it to be some other sick and dying dark-haired drifter.

When Dean sees it is Cas, he's so frigging relieved he can't believe he ever wanted it to be anything but. The bruises on Cas's cheekbone, shadows under his eyes, and the sweat making his skin glisten in the fluorescent lighting, all mark him as obviously not an angel anymore, but suddenly it doesn't seem that big a problem.

-l-

Dean tells them Cas has insurance and gets him moved to a private room.

He rings Sam. "I need insurance in the name of Cas Winchester," he says self-consciously. 'Winchester' had just popped into his head when they'd updated all the paperwork and registered Cas properly but now he wishes he'd thought of something else; he can hear Sam's surprise down the phone line, the asshole.

To give him credit, Sam doesn't say anything. _'Just 'Cas' or 'Castiel'?_' he checks instead.

"Just 'Cas'. He's not one of those dicks any more." Dean turns to the wall and slams a hand flat against it loud and hard enough to raise a few eyebrows. "He's fucking black and blue all over, Sam. If I ever catch the bastards who did that to him... " Dean pauses and takes a breath. "And he's really sick. They're keeping him doped up to the eyeballs and... " Dean pauses and stares over his shoulder through the open door into Cas's room at the figure seemingly sleeping peacefully in the bed. Cas is not supposed to be breakable, damnit.

'_Dean?'_

"Yeah, I'm here," Dean says, bringing himself back to the conversation with an effort. "Sometime soon with that Insurance, Sam before they start getting nervous."

Dean goes back into Cas's room. He spends the evening alternating between sitting by Cas's bed, listening to Cas's breath rattling weakly in his chest, escaping from his mouth in short, sharp wheezes, and when it gets too much for him to watch Cas's human life eking out one breath at a time, sneaking guiltily off to the cafeteria or the waiting room, or on one freaky occasion the chapel, to do nothing but sit and stare helplessly at a blank wall. When Cas had first arrived, they'd had him in ICU. The fact that he's in a proper room now is a good thing Dean repeatedly tells himself until he has the strength to go back and start the cycle again.

It's probably a good thing for all concerned when they chuck him out for the night.

-l-

Sam comes through with the insurance by mid-morning the next day and faxes through the details. Dean holds his breath, smiling his most confident smile tinged with the appropriate level of concern for his 'cousin' and is frigging relieved when it all passes muster. His little brother's a genius.

Sam and Kevin turn up at the hospital in person late afternoon and Dean's actually pleased to see them so he doesn't give Sam hell for dragging himself for several hours across two states.

Kevin goes to find them a motel and Dean takes Sam in to see Cas.

"They're keeping him asleep – he doesn't even know I'm here." Dean's not sure why that's the first thing he mentions but it bothers him more than he is prepared to try and understand that Cas doesn't even know he's not alone.

"He's going to be okay though?"

"Yeah. They say so."

Sam looks relieved. He pulls out a whole ream of papers from a satchel. "I've got everything we need here – birth certificates, social security, medical history, insurance, address history; no marriages or any other checks they can do; no parents or siblings; no other family – just us. There shouldn't be any problem if we want to take him home. We do want to take him home, right?"

Dean looks at his brother as if he's mad.

"Yeah, stupid question," Sam says. "When?"

"They say tomorrow, maybe." Dean waves a hand aggressively. "It's only because those bastards beat him that it's as bad as it is."

"About that," Sam says slowly, "from what I hear they're already regretting it." Dean's not sure if he's happy the wranglers got their come-uppance or if he's pissed because it wasn't him that got to give it to them.

-l-

When they turn up to visit the next day, the first thing Dean does after checking in on Cas is go to see when they can take Cas home. Tomorrow, probably. With an effort a saint would be proud of Dean avoids pointing out that they said that yesterday. They've started weaning Cas off the sleeping meds and want to check he's coping. Not that they don't trust Dean to look after him they add hurriedly at Dean's aggrieved look.

When he gets back to Cas's room, Sam and Kevin are in there, reading.

"Cas woke up for a second – he asked for you," Sam reports a tad too casually.

"Why didn't you come and get me?" Dean asks annoyed, walking over to Cas's bed and peering into his friend's sleeping face. He pushes sweaty hair back from Cas's forehead.

"Dean, he was awake for like five seconds, max. I'm not even sure he was truly awake to be honest."

"Next time," Dean says pointing an accusatory finger at Sam, "Come and get me."

Sam puts on a sympathetic bitch face that Dean didn't know he had in his repertoire and Dean thought he'd seen them all. Sam tosses his readers digest onto the side table. "Me and Kevin are going to go get coffee and breakfast. You want anything?"

"Bring me back some coffee and donuts. I wanna be here when he wakes up again."

-l-

Dean almost jumps out of his skin when something stings the back of his hand. He'd fallen asleep in the chair again. Cas's fingers are still where they were, pinching the skin on his hand and his eyes are gazing at Dean in disbelief.

"Cas," Dean murmurs coming closer when he's recovered from the fright.

"I'm sorry," Cas says, his voice sounding dry and raspy.

"I know." Dean smiles. "I got your note," Dean takes Castiel's hand, wrapping cool fingers around Castiel's warmer palm. They're not 'home'; they're not in the bunker. They're in some public hospital in a town Dean's never been before with the smell of disinfectant and clean sheets and an underlying hint of sweat and illness, but Dean's just had something of an epiphany as he looks at the hand wrapped up in his own. He looks back up at Cas. "Welcome home," he says.


End file.
